FAQ
'FAQ - New Players' Question 1: What is this? Answer: As mentioned in the recruitment thread, The Playground is - and always has been - a structured free-form environment built and run by the players. There are no restrictions on what you can play, as long as you can fit it into the story, pay for its advantages, and play it well. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, "Whatever you are, be a good one." Many players find this to be extremely appealing. If you're looking for something with more structure to it, then we recommend Dungeons and Dragons, Exalted, GURPS, or one of the dozens of other systems of Role Playing Games out there. If you're looking for something with less structure, we recommend pure free form. Most of all, though, we recommend that you give this system a chance. Question 2: How do I play? Answer: Make a character and some story elements, get it approved by a couple of mods, and start posting! But since you're new to this (or if you're just reading this on a lark), then we offer the following recommendations: *'Love your concept:' Love every part of it. Making a detailed and relatable character is a lot of work, but it can be incredibly rewarding. This game is all about roleplay - even losing a fight is a chance to shine from an RP standpoint. Resist the temptation to hammer out a character as fast as possible - it might be neat, but there are no prizes for finishing first and if you don't love the finished product, you're going to get bored and quit. This also goes for one-trick "gimmick" characters. If you're playing something for the sole reason that no DM has ever let you play it before, it probably isn't a good character for this game, either. *'Powers are interesting, but flaws are more interesting:' Conflict and Drama are, in the end, the only things that will hold a reader's or viewer's attention in a story like the one we'll be weaving. That means that a perfect (read: Mary Sue) character that goes around resolving problems without anything ever being their fault is literally making the story more boring. This is actually a fairly dark setting; some of the old characters include an elven agent with a checkered past and her following of assassins and spies, a smuggler, thief, and cheat with a huge price on his head, a university student dabbling in forbidden magic that may be a bit beyond his ability to control, and an adulteress knowingly funding a criminal enterprise - and these are the good guys! *'Your writing doesn't have to be perfect:' We understand that not everyone has written as much as we have, and that we're not necessarily the best writers around. We would, however, like for you to put your best effort into this and accept criticism in a mature and rational fashion. *'Your build absolutely will not be perfect:' Competition is a healthy thing, and you can certainly put yourself at odds with other players in this game. Just understand that if you get into a lot of contests you are probably going to lose sometimes, and if you try to somehow beat the system the backlash will lead to you losing more often than not. Focus on creating a well-rounded and interesting character rather than trumping other character builds - that's really the only way to win at this game. Question 3: Okay, I'm playing, but no one is interacting with me. Why not? Answer: Probably because you've never interacted with them. There's no real GM to move things along here. There are moderators (Hi there!), but we aren't running the show (not moreso than any other player, at least), we just resolve arguments and ensure that new material doesn't contradict established story elements. If you want interaction (and of course you do, since you'd be playing a CRPG otherwise), then you'll need to get out into the world and go badger some other characters. Writing by yourself is basically fanfiction. Question 4: I was just told that my advantage was "vetoed." Why does the other guy get to do that but not me? Answer: At the end of the day, the players (and if they can't agree, the mods) decide on which advantages apply in a specific situation. If you have somehow ended up in a situation where it doesn't make any sense for an advantage to work, then it might not work even if you paid the price for it to work in that situation. As a rule of thumb, the more expensive the advantage was, the less likely it is to get vetoed. Please be a good sport about it, and use common sense. 'FAQ - Returning Players' Question 1: Why did you change the system? Answer: Because in many ways, the system needed changing. The old system had a kind of elegence to it, but there were four main problems (and a few little ones). The first was that the advantage system we had in place led to quite a bit of argument over the relative 'rarity' of an advantage. Rather a lot of it, in fact, and while the mods all love a good argument, getting into two or three of them for each character was a bit much. Second, the advantage system also heavily encouraged multifaceted combat stacking, to the point where Uncommon advantages were being taken with far higher frequency than Common ones, and modifiers to scenarios were boosted ever higher by finding what were essentially different names for the same advantage over and over again. Without naming names, there were also attempts to make a customized version of an existing advantage that was like the original, but better. Third, the old system has no provision for aggressively pursuing an agenda if the other player refuses to engage. This system has a concrete answer to a player going "Noooo don't hurt my special noun here." Finally, this system also has an answer to having multiple players gang up on one PC. Previously, a coalition of three player characters could defeat absolutely anything but another, bigger coalition without question or cause for alarm. Now they stand a chance, albeit a small one, of being defeated by a lucky and crafty enough lesser force. This also finally makes locus advantages as strong as they should have been. Question 2: Why didn't we get a say in it? Answer: Because the last time we opened the discussion up to everyone, we ended up getting nothing accomplished other than switching from 1d10 to 2d6 for our base die roll, and even that took three days of debate. A full rules overhaul took months with just the mods working on it. If you don't like it, you are of course not constrained to play, but we strongly recommend that you try it first. Question 3: Holy Magic the Gathering, Batman! This is way more complicated than it was before. Answer: That's not really a question, but what you probably meant to ask was how this new system is an improvement if one of the main selling points was simplicity. The answer is that it's really not that much more complicated. The biggest push forward in complexity was the Event system, but Nef's tutorial, also conveniently located on this very site, explains it quite clearly. You'll still find that the betting rules are easier to learn than poker's and that the event rules are easier to learn than most simple sports. The mods spent a lot of time working on, testing, breaking, rebuilding, testing, arguing over, and testing this system to ensure that it couldn't be abused to the detriment of the game. We had to add a few new rules, but we're content with the outcome, and confident in our new system. Question 4: Well I'm not. I can see plain as day how to beat the system - I'll just overspecialize in one area and aggressively engage opposing players to penalize them. Answer: That's not a question either, but before you do that, let me tell you the sad, tragic story of Bob the Archer. Bob the Archer was a character Nefarion Xid made to see if the system could be broken in exactly the manner that you've just described. Bob took his boatload of Advantage Points and spent them on various cheap and stacking archery-related combat advantages, eventually becoming such a combat boss that no other character could best him. He then entered the story and began to behave in exactly that fashion. And for a while, it worked. He was much more badass than the more balanced and, frankly, interesting characters. But then we had a chapter rollover. The characters, in game, now knew of Bob the Archer and his deadly, arrow-laden death dealing ability. Each of them, in their own way, invested in even cheaper resistances toward Bob the Archer and his abilities. With just a few AP, they managed to neutralize enough of Bob's advantages to make the fights even again. And then it got worse. A rogue-type test character arrived and attempted to talk Bob out of his bow. Bob vetoed, of course, and then had it promptly stolen. With no Utility *or* Social advantages, Bob had serious problems not being convinced of things or taken advantage of in non-combat situations. With his bow gone, another combat character showed up and hammered Bob mercilessly, vetoing his archer advantages on the grounds that he'd just had his bow stolen. Normally, the mods would step in to stop something like that, but aggressive trolls get an exception. Eventually, Bob was reduced to little more than an impotent pile of penalties and nullified advantages, and died alone and unloved in Test-Bastion's gutters. Question 5: Oh, wow... uh... what if someone dumped everything into a locus and-''' Answer: Ends the same way, really. The system self-adjusts to allow clever and cooperative players to eat munchkins alive. '''Question 6: Alright, but why are we bringing Bastion back? Why not start fresh? Answer: Several reasons, but mostly because we wanted to, and because the players keep clamoring for a standard fantasy setup. What's more, things are already happening in Bastion, so we can skip past that awkward phase where everyone is waiting on everyone to make a move. Question 7: Doesn't this preclude making the game openly built from the ground up by the players? Answer: Yes and no. On the one hand, the game has some history and lore to it already. On the other hand, we're missing a lot of fantasy staples, and quite a bit of the continent hasn't been filled in yet - to say nothing of the rest of the world! Just figure out why we haven't seen it in Bastion yet (the response "it's this super cool thing that only my character has", while valid, is also quite boring and we think you can do better) and you can easily include it - or use the large body of existing elements to make your character and use your story elements to add details to Bastion itself. Question 8: Wait, some of the stuff that I remember from Bastion 1 is missing. What happened to the dwarves? The Shathons? The Uathag? To kingdom here? Answer: Like all of these games, Bastion had a few players show up long enough to make four story elements, post twice, and vanish. We've removed some of the unused, underused, and ill-fitting story elements to make more room for things the players want to add to the setting (see above). Question 9: I had a character in the first Bastion game. Can I reuse it? Answer: Absolutely. You do have to rebuild the advantages in accordance with the new system, though. Look at the entries for Stray and Maranis if you need examples. Question 10: Can I make a Vampire? Answer: No. Not only that, we actually retroactively removed the vampires that Bastion already had. They're ghouls now, thanks for asking. Question 11: But-''' Answer: No. '''Question 12: Does this mean you're not going to work with PG5 anymore? Answer: It doesn't mean that at all. We did drop PG 4 for PG 5, but that was only because we had, not to put too fine a point on it, already dropped it. We fully intend to stay with PG 5, which will be keeping the older rule system. That should about cover it. We hope to see your submitted character soon! - The Mods.